Watchmen, A Meditation On Power
by Zoe Stark
"What Watchmen became was entirely a meditation about power.”
— Alan Moore (Comics Britannia)
In the Pellitteri essay we read earlier in the semester, he points to Moore and Gibbons subverting traditional superhero comic books and the source of evil within them. When we wrote our discussion posts about the essay in regards to Watchmen and its power dynamics, I brought up Ozymandias’ covert authoritarianism. To the rest of his past teammates Ozymandias’ fascism is hidden, until the climax of Watchmen where he single-handedly decides to eradicate three million New Yorkers for the sake of peace. Logically, and I mean pure logic, Ozymandias’ plan works. With all of the invasions and rising nuclear arms tension during the Cold War, to introduce a separate enemy that has no clear links to any of the countries involved that has also slaughtered an incredibly high amount of people, encourages the countries to focus on peace rather than fight with one another. To gather their powers and be prepared for possibly another giant squid annihilation in any country. However, ethically and emotionally, Ozymandias’ plan is a horrifying abuse of power, while he ultimately and effectively ended the Cold War, he viewed three million people, who had lives, values, families, and contributed to society, as pawns that he had the right to give up. What’s even more strikingly terrifying is Ozymandias telling Jon that he “know[s]. I know that I’ve struggled across the backs of murdered innocents to save humanity...But someone had to take the weight of that awful, necessary crime” (Moore and Gibbons 12:27:2). Only it’s noteworthy to point out that he doesn’t seem to truly know. If he knows it was a horrible crime and he should avoid committing it at all costs, he should have been seen trying to avoid this end result. Jon has been shown to be somewhat clairvoyant, he seems to be one with the universe, experiencing time all at once, and since Ozymandias is famed for being the literal smartest man in the world, together, they could have come up with another solution that’s better and preferable than mass extermination of three million people. For instance, at the end of chapter three, Jon transports himself to Mars, in chapter four, he builds himself a castle there, and in chapter nine, Jon transports Laurie there as well. He does all of this with ease, Ozymandias could have asked Jon to transport all nuclear weapons, all of the information on them, files, books, research, etc. to Mars where only Jon has been shown to have the ability to reach. And even then, Jon has shown no desire to use nuclear power, and even then I doubt he would need an external weapon when he himself is so powerful. If Ozymandias truly wanted to avoid mass slaughter, if he truly valued the lives of other people and recognized their worth,
he would at least made attempts to slow the escalation of the Cold War. Instead, he claims he dreads murdering three million people, but that’s the path he chose to go down, he saw the world about to burn and jumped straight to lighting the match
himself. Singularly, Ozymandias made the choice, because there were other options, it is a choice, to slaughter millions because he wanted and was able.
Ozymandias’ fascism falls in line with a more modern version, the devil next door, the person you least expect to be or support unilateral abuse of power. In the Pellitteri essay, Pellitteri references Moore’s interview where Moore appears about how fascists are no longer just political and military leaders, but they are everyday people who care about their children and the only difference between them and other community members is the fact that they are fascists. In my discussion post, I asked how many of us personally know people who are close to us, that supported the last president and the fascism he boasted. Personally, in the early days of the pandemic, when numbers where escalating by the day, I found out that the parents of a friend I’d had since first grade were posting about their support of Trump on facebook. My father and her father were close, they co-coached our soccer team for years, they went to Columbus Crew games together, I was always at their house as a kid and they were always talking, even texting each other, all the time. We knew they were more suburban religious conservatives, and since my family falls more in line with city liberalism, we never talked about politics. When my father saw our family friend posting about how great Trump is, he’s refused to talk to him ever since, it came as a total shock that people we’d known and trusted for over a decade would support fascism so openly and proudly. Even more shocking that they would have had these beliefs behind closed doors, while we were close with them. Moore is right, modern day fascism, especially in the eighties, is more quiet and unsuspecting. Fascists are people who care about their families just like anyone else, but their fascism is what makes them different.
While in recent years, it has become far louder than previous years, in the beginning, fascism and authoritarianism in comics were represented as clear villains.
Captain America’s first cover was him literally punching Hitler in the face, the poster child for fascism and authoritarianism. Villains, representing authoritarianism and fascism, are clearly displayed as villains. They look like villains, they act like villains, and they hurt people publicly and purposefully like villains. Moore and Gibbons subvert this by having Ozymandias, the smartest man on earth, old teammate of Rorschach, Laurie, Dan, Jon, and The Comedian, viewed as a good man, secretly and extensively plan for mass slaughter. Rorschach, Dan, Laurie, and Jon were looking for an obnoxiously clear villain who clearly represents fascism and authoritarianism, but they lost because they didn’t and couldn’t, see that their friend was the one who was secretly evil. I still agree with the Pellitteri essay in which he argues that Watchmen is a return to origins for the superhero genre. And I still think that Watchmen is a modernization as well as a return to origins, because of the subversion of the appearance of villainy and fascism. Heroes can and do lose battles, but it’s usually because the villain had a bigger badder weapon that the heroes can’t beat yet, not because the villain was hiding themself as an ex-hero, current friend of heroes, whose masterplan relies on this belief that they couldn’t hurt others because of their past. Ozymandias had money, infinite knowledge between he and Jon, and qualified crime fighters he knew personally for years. If they had all worked together, which is admittedly stereotypical, they could have found even a temporary solution. Instead, Ozymandias decided to jump the shark and go straight to killing people by the millions. Ozymandias has all the power and decided to abuse it to mass murder for the what he claims is peace. While he claims he understands the weight of his actions, he clearly does not as he had other options and decided, by himself, to ignore those other options and again, kill three million people. Ozymadias had all of the power in Watchmen, it’s why he was able to hide for so long and then hide after he slaughtered millions. The civilians had no power, the victims had no power, the heroes had no power, and the militaries, which had actual nuclear weapons, had no power in comparison to Ozymandias. The source of Ozymandias’ power relied on his ability to be the devil next door, to appear like a hero, an all around nice guy. If Ozymandias displayed his beliefs, plan, or power beforehand, Rorschach, Dan, Laurie, and Jon would have seen through him and there’s a possibility they could have prevented the
giant squid attack that Ozymandias planned. Even today, it’s easy to rally against apparent fascists and authoritarians, their beliefs are obvious and usually intend to decimate a portion of the population while another portion benefits. It’s far more difficult to gather people to fight against someone who appears human or have beliefs that are hard to discern, even if they may have a lot of power and intend to hurt people, if they appear to be just like everyone else, there are less people willing to fight against them. Ozymandias was a hero, he used his reputation as a mask to hide his true intentions and power, powers he could have used to help stop the Cold War without
murdering millions, he had all of the power in the world but decided, on his own, to sacrifice people with lives and values of their own for what Ozymandias decided was the greater good.
Works Cited
Moore, Alan, and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen. DC, 2014.
Pellitteri, Marco. Alan Moore, Watchmen and Some Notes on the Ideology of Superhero Comics,
2011, pp. 81-89.
— Alan Moore (Comics Britannia)
In the Pellitteri essay we read earlier in the semester, he points to Moore and Gibbons subverting traditional superhero comic books and the source of evil within them. When we wrote our discussion posts about the essay in regards to Watchmen and its power dynamics, I brought up Ozymandias’ covert authoritarianism. To the rest of his past teammates Ozymandias’ fascism is hidden, until the climax of Watchmen where he single-handedly decides to eradicate three million New Yorkers for the sake of peace. Logically, and I mean pure logic, Ozymandias’ plan works. With all of the invasions and rising nuclear arms tension during the Cold War, to introduce a separate enemy that has no clear links to any of the countries involved that has also slaughtered an incredibly high amount of people, encourages the countries to focus on peace rather than fight with one another. To gather their powers and be prepared for possibly another giant squid annihilation in any country. However, ethically and emotionally, Ozymandias’ plan is a horrifying abuse of power, while he ultimately and effectively ended the Cold War, he viewed three million people, who had lives, values, families, and contributed to society, as pawns that he had the right to give up. What’s even more strikingly terrifying is Ozymandias telling Jon that he “know[s]. I know that I’ve struggled across the backs of murdered innocents to save humanity...But someone had to take the weight of that awful, necessary crime” (Moore and Gibbons 12:27:2). Only it’s noteworthy to point out that he doesn’t seem to truly know. If he knows it was a horrible crime and he should avoid committing it at all costs, he should have been seen trying to avoid this end result. Jon has been shown to be somewhat clairvoyant, he seems to be one with the universe, experiencing time all at once, and since Ozymandias is famed for being the literal smartest man in the world, together, they could have come up with another solution that’s better and preferable than mass extermination of three million people. For instance, at the end of chapter three, Jon transports himself to Mars, in chapter four, he builds himself a castle there, and in chapter nine, Jon transports Laurie there as well. He does all of this with ease, Ozymandias could have asked Jon to transport all nuclear weapons, all of the information on them, files, books, research, etc. to Mars where only Jon has been shown to have the ability to reach. And even then, Jon has shown no desire to use nuclear power, and even then I doubt he would need an external weapon when he himself is so powerful. If Ozymandias truly wanted to avoid mass slaughter, if he truly valued the lives of other people and recognized their worth,
he would at least made attempts to slow the escalation of the Cold War. Instead, he claims he dreads murdering three million people, but that’s the path he chose to go down, he saw the world about to burn and jumped straight to lighting the match
himself. Singularly, Ozymandias made the choice, because there were other options, it is a choice, to slaughter millions because he wanted and was able.
Ozymandias’ fascism falls in line with a more modern version, the devil next door, the person you least expect to be or support unilateral abuse of power. In the Pellitteri essay, Pellitteri references Moore’s interview where Moore appears about how fascists are no longer just political and military leaders, but they are everyday people who care about their children and the only difference between them and other community members is the fact that they are fascists. In my discussion post, I asked how many of us personally know people who are close to us, that supported the last president and the fascism he boasted. Personally, in the early days of the pandemic, when numbers where escalating by the day, I found out that the parents of a friend I’d had since first grade were posting about their support of Trump on facebook. My father and her father were close, they co-coached our soccer team for years, they went to Columbus Crew games together, I was always at their house as a kid and they were always talking, even texting each other, all the time. We knew they were more suburban religious conservatives, and since my family falls more in line with city liberalism, we never talked about politics. When my father saw our family friend posting about how great Trump is, he’s refused to talk to him ever since, it came as a total shock that people we’d known and trusted for over a decade would support fascism so openly and proudly. Even more shocking that they would have had these beliefs behind closed doors, while we were close with them. Moore is right, modern day fascism, especially in the eighties, is more quiet and unsuspecting. Fascists are people who care about their families just like anyone else, but their fascism is what makes them different.
While in recent years, it has become far louder than previous years, in the beginning, fascism and authoritarianism in comics were represented as clear villains.
Captain America’s first cover was him literally punching Hitler in the face, the poster child for fascism and authoritarianism. Villains, representing authoritarianism and fascism, are clearly displayed as villains. They look like villains, they act like villains, and they hurt people publicly and purposefully like villains. Moore and Gibbons subvert this by having Ozymandias, the smartest man on earth, old teammate of Rorschach, Laurie, Dan, Jon, and The Comedian, viewed as a good man, secretly and extensively plan for mass slaughter. Rorschach, Dan, Laurie, and Jon were looking for an obnoxiously clear villain who clearly represents fascism and authoritarianism, but they lost because they didn’t and couldn’t, see that their friend was the one who was secretly evil. I still agree with the Pellitteri essay in which he argues that Watchmen is a return to origins for the superhero genre. And I still think that Watchmen is a modernization as well as a return to origins, because of the subversion of the appearance of villainy and fascism. Heroes can and do lose battles, but it’s usually because the villain had a bigger badder weapon that the heroes can’t beat yet, not because the villain was hiding themself as an ex-hero, current friend of heroes, whose masterplan relies on this belief that they couldn’t hurt others because of their past. Ozymandias had money, infinite knowledge between he and Jon, and qualified crime fighters he knew personally for years. If they had all worked together, which is admittedly stereotypical, they could have found even a temporary solution. Instead, Ozymandias decided to jump the shark and go straight to killing people by the millions. Ozymandias has all the power and decided to abuse it to mass murder for the what he claims is peace. While he claims he understands the weight of his actions, he clearly does not as he had other options and decided, by himself, to ignore those other options and again, kill three million people. Ozymadias had all of the power in Watchmen, it’s why he was able to hide for so long and then hide after he slaughtered millions. The civilians had no power, the victims had no power, the heroes had no power, and the militaries, which had actual nuclear weapons, had no power in comparison to Ozymandias. The source of Ozymandias’ power relied on his ability to be the devil next door, to appear like a hero, an all around nice guy. If Ozymandias displayed his beliefs, plan, or power beforehand, Rorschach, Dan, Laurie, and Jon would have seen through him and there’s a possibility they could have prevented the
giant squid attack that Ozymandias planned. Even today, it’s easy to rally against apparent fascists and authoritarians, their beliefs are obvious and usually intend to decimate a portion of the population while another portion benefits. It’s far more difficult to gather people to fight against someone who appears human or have beliefs that are hard to discern, even if they may have a lot of power and intend to hurt people, if they appear to be just like everyone else, there are less people willing to fight against them. Ozymandias was a hero, he used his reputation as a mask to hide his true intentions and power, powers he could have used to help stop the Cold War without
murdering millions, he had all of the power in the world but decided, on his own, to sacrifice people with lives and values of their own for what Ozymandias decided was the greater good.
Works Cited
Moore, Alan, and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen. DC, 2014.
Pellitteri, Marco. Alan Moore, Watchmen and Some Notes on the Ideology of Superhero Comics,
2011, pp. 81-89.